Perfect Strangers (26 page)

He turned to Sophie, undressing her with a long, lascivious stare. ‘Nick has good taste in women,’ he said softly, then turned back to Josh.

‘How about you go and have another pastis,
mon ami
. Maybe leave me here with Sophie.’

‘Leave her out of this,’ said Josh.

Maurice stepped towards Sophie and stroked her cheek, making her flinch back.

‘Why?’ He smiled, showing small, yellowing teeth. ‘She would like it. All Nick’s girls like a good fuck, don’t they?’

Josh moved like lightning, pushing Maurice up against the wall with his hand around the man’s scrawny throat before Sophie could even blink. The door burst open and Panda stood there holding a club.

‘Let’s not make this more difficult than it has to be, eh, Maurice?’ said Josh in a low, threatening voice. He had almost lifted the Frenchman off the ground, but Sophie didn’t fancy his chances against the more robust Panda.

Maurice spat in his face.

‘Fuck you,’ he hissed.

Josh drew his left fist back to throw a punch.

‘Don’t,’ screamed Sophie as Panda came up behind her and put his arm around her throat.

Josh glanced round. His teeth bared as he saw Panda, then he slammed Maurice harder against the wall.

‘A name, Maurice. Just give me a name and we’ll be out of here.’

Panda’s thick biceps were pushing down on Sophie’s throat and she could barely breathe. Finally Maurice said something in rapid-fire French and Panda let her go. As Josh released his grip on Maurice, the tension slowly dispersed.

Maurice pushed Josh away. ‘I can give you the name of the drop point, a wine wholesaler in Cannes. But I swear that’s all I know,’ he said tersely.

‘What’s it called?’

‘He is a wine merchant called Jacques Durand. He has a shopfront in the old town, not far from the harbour. He took supplies from Nick and sold them on to rich Russians on the Riviera.’

‘Russians?’ queried Josh. Sophie knew he was thinking the same thing as she was.

‘Yes, Russians,’ repeated Maurice. ‘You know that’s who has all the money now.’

‘Thanks, Maurice, you’ve been very helpful,’ sneered Josh, leading Sophie towards the door.

‘Don’t ever come back here,’ said Maurice in a low, threatening voice. ‘If you come back, I will kill you.’

Josh turned back, his coolness returning.

‘That’s what I like about you, Maurice,’ he smiled. ‘You always did think big.’

He held Sophie’s hand in a firm, protective gesture and all she could do was squeeze back gratefully.

24

They arrived at Gare d’Austerlitz on the left bank of the Seine at a little after nine p.m. It was still busy with commuters heading home to the suburbs and the towns to the south.

‘What are we doing here?’ asked Sophie, puzzled.

‘The sleeper train leaves for Nice in thirty minutes. If we’re quick, we can make it.’

‘What about Le Bristol?’ she asked, dreaming of that comfortable emperor-sized bed.

‘Another time,’ he said, not looking at her.

‘Stay here,’ said Josh, at the entrance to the ticket office. ‘I’m going to buy the tickets. You go to that kiosk and get some water and food,’ he added, thrusting a fifty-euro note at her.

She nodded, thinking she would also buy a strong coffee. She could still taste the aniseed from the pastis in Le Cellar and didn’t want any reminders of that place.

Sophie bought what she needed from the small station shop and walked back out on to the concourse. Josh was still in the ticket queue. She looked at him for a moment, realising this was the first time they had been apart in over twenty-four hours. She still didn’t really know who this man was, but she did know he had defended her from that rat-faced pimp Maurice. Her face flushed as she thought of it. What if Josh hadn’t been there?
Well, you wouldn’t have been in that godawful club for a start
, said a voice in her head. But the thing was, she had to stay with Josh. Without him, she would be lost. She would almost certainly be in London, possibly in a police cell, maybe even dead.

She shivered, despite the heat. With a desperate need to hear a familiar voice, she realised she hadn’t yet contacted her mother, who would be back in London from Denmark. She would be frantic with worry and Sophie didn’t blame her. Her daughter had been questioned in connection with a high-profile murder and now she had disappeared without letting anybody know where she was, or what she was doing.

Defiantly, she went back into the kiosk and bought a five-euro phone card, then crossed to the bank of payphones near the ticket office. She felt a stab of guilt as she lifted the receiver. Josh would certainly be angry if he knew what she was doing; he’d drummed into her the need to stay off the phones and that the only way to contact the outside world was email – and even then, only from a public computer. But how was she supposed to find a bloody internet café in the middle of Paris while being chased by the police, hit men and now, probably, Maurice and his cronies? She would call her mother for just a few seconds. Just to let her know she was safe. And anyway, if by some miracle someone did trace the call, they’d be miles away from Paris.

‘Hello, Julia Ellis,’ said the voice at the other end of the line.

Sophie felt a sudden wave of relief and homesickness. She wanted to burst into tears, but she knew she had to hold it in for her mother’s sake.

‘Mum, it’s me.’

‘Darling!’ cried Julia. ‘Where
are
you?’

‘Don’t worry, I’m safe.’ At least Josh would be happy she kept it vague.

‘Come home, Sophie, please. The police are worried about you.’

‘Worried?’ said Sophie. ‘They want to arrest me.’

‘Well, you’re not making things any easier for yourself by disappearing. You have nothing to hide, so why don’t you come in and speak to them again? Mr Gould will go with you.’

‘I can’t. I need to find out who killed Nick first.’

‘Sophie, don’t be ridiculous,’ hissed her mother. ‘That’s the police’s job, not yours. I had some officers round here this morning actually, taking fingerprints and whatnot.’

‘Fingerprints? For me? But they’ve already got my fingerprints.’

She could feel the clock ticking and knew she had to get off the phone.

‘The burglary, darling,’ gasped Julia. ‘I came back from Denmark and – oh! It was horrible, Sophie. They’d turned the place upside down, torn the curtains, it’s incredible what these thugs will do. High on drugs, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Wade House had been burgled? Sophie immediately felt unsettled. Had they been after her? Had they been looking for something? Presumably whatever it was they had been after at her flat.

‘Nothing appears to have been taken,’ Julia was saying, ‘but they left it in a terrible mess and the TV is in pieces. I hope it’s insured; you know how your father loved cutting corners.’

In the distance Sophie could hear a tannoy announcement; she didn’t understand it, but she recognised the word ‘Nice’.

‘Mum, I have to go,’ she said.

‘Sophie, please, we need to talk. Are you sure you’re all right? I’m at my wits’ end.’

People were moving towards the platforms now. She couldn’t be on the phone when Josh came looking for her.

‘Sorry, Mum. I love you.’

She put down the receiver and hurried back to the kiosk just as Josh came striding towards her.

‘Everything set?’ he said, tapping two train tickets against the palm of his hand. ‘They’ve announced the platform, we’d better get moving.’

Sophie forced a smile and picked up her bag.

‘Let’s go.’

They climbed on board just as the guard blew his whistle, and moved through the gently swaying train to find their allocated sleeper cabin. It was tiny. Two bunk beds on top of each other with just about enough room to sit and a metal sink of the type you’d get in a lavatory.

‘Cosy,’ said Josh, locking the door behind them.

‘You can go on top,’ said Sophie, putting her bag on the bottom bunk.

‘Just how I like it,’ he quipped, but Sophie ignored him.

‘Well, I don’t think they have a disco on the train, so I guess we’d better get some sleep,’ added Josh, climbing into the top bunk. ‘Early start tomorrow.’

Sophie got into her bunk and, making sure she was out of his line of view, undressed and slipped into the lightweight sleeping bag.

Josh turned off the light and pulled down the window blind. For a while they were both silent, listening to the train click over the points, feeling the gentle rock of the carriage, hearing people talking quietly as they passed in the corridor outside.

‘What time are we going to be in the south?’ said Sophie, unable to sleep.

‘Seven-ish. The train only goes to Nice, so we’ll have to double back on ourselves to get to Cannes.’

She wriggled around the sleeping bag, staring up at the base of Josh’s bunk, trying to picture him up there.
Stop it, Sophie
, she thought. She supposed it was the romance of being in a sleeper train, feeling a little like Eva Marie Saint in that Hitchcock film she was in with Cary Grant.
North by Northwest
? It had been years since she’d seen it, but she was sure they’d shared a sleeper train cabin. Or was it Audrey Hepburn?

‘It’s not quite Le Bristol,’ she said.

‘You have very expensive tastes, Miss Ellis,’ said Josh and she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘D’you know, this used to be the most glamorous way to travel a hundred years ago? It was called the Blue Train and it ferried all the wealthy people from London and Paris to the Côte d’Azur. It was all first class. Coco Chanel, Churchill, royalty – they’ve all been on it.’

‘You know a lot about a lot of things,’ said Sophie candidly.

‘I know a little bit about a lot,’ he responded. ‘I left school at sixteen, so everything I’ve learnt has been from books, people I’ve met, TV programmes I’ve watched. I suppose I keep my ears and my eyes open.’

‘So how did you get into this?’

‘What, selling watches?’

‘Josh, you know what I mean. The lock-up, Maurice, all that.’

There was something about not seeing someone, not looking them in the face, that made it possible to ask anything. She wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say, of course, except that she wanted to hear something good. Josh might be a thief or a con man, she didn’t really know, but back at Le Cellar he had been – what?
My hero
, she thought, feeling embarrassed and, if she was honest, turned on at the same time.

‘After school I was jobless, aimless, kicking around the arse end of Edinburgh. There were a lot of drugs and gangs, and I was terrified by all that. So instead I got in with a crowd that used to sell fake stuff around pubs and on street corners. I was that cocky little bleeder you’d see on the high street surrounded by a crowd, selling cheap perfume: “gen-u-ine Armani, ladies, a tenner for two”.’

His impression made her giggle. She’d never have bought anything from a rogue street trader like the one he was describing – but then she’d never seen Josh, had she?

‘How did you meet Nick?’

‘That was when I moved from Scotland to London in my early twenties. I think in the back of my mind I really believed the streets might be paved with gold. Of course they weren’t, but then you
could
charge twice as much for knock-off Blue Stratos on Oxford Street. Anyway, I bumped into Nick in some nightclub in Soho. I tried to sell him a Rolex and you know what he said? “Don’t waste your time.” I thought he was telling me to sod off because he could see the watch was a fake, but he wasn’t. He told me I had a gift.’

‘A gift?’

‘Charm, patter, I don’t know. I never found it hard to sell the watches, however ropy they were, put it that way. I suppose I should have got on a training scheme and become a salesman, sold washing machines or insurance. Anyway, Nick brought me into a couple of scams he was running. And the rest, as they say, is history.’

‘What kind of scams, Josh?’

He was quiet for a moment.

‘Nothing I’m proud of. But I was grateful to Nick. He taught me a lot and gave me focus, made me see that I didn’t have to spend the rest of my life standing on street corners selling vinegar in fancy bottles. He did me a huge favour.’

‘He led you astray, more like,’ said Sophie softly. She wondered if that was how it worked for all criminals. She didn’t suppose that people started out bad, but somewhere along the line they met the wrong person, fell in with the wrong crowd and were tempted on to another path.

‘Don’t be too down on Nick,’ said Josh. ‘Everyone assumes he was this morally bankrupt monster destroying innocent women’s lives, but let me tell you, most of those women were playing some sort of game with him too. They all wanted something from Nick. Those women’ – he whistled – ‘they can be ruthless.’

Sophie was surprised how readily Josh was defending Nick.

‘I got the impression that the two of you didn’t like each other that much,’ she said. ‘Or was all that stuff at the Chariot party an act too?’

‘No, we did fall out,’ said Josh in the darkness. ‘Nick seemed to think that because he’d helped me out in the past, whenever he called I would come running. There was a job in Monaco last summer.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t want to be involved.’

‘Why not?’

She heard him snort.

‘You
are
nosy, aren’t you?’

‘Come on, Josh. It might be something to do with his death.’

‘It involved duping old ladies in Monte Carlo, if you must know. Somehow I doubt a member of the blue-rinse brigade killed Nick.’

Sophie didn’t know why she was so glad Josh had turned down Nick’s scheme, but she was. She supposed she wanted to hear that Josh McCormack wasn’t all bad, that he had a heart and it wasn’t hidden too far below the surface.

‘So why didn’t you do it?’ she asked.

‘Look, I just couldn’t. That was the reason I started the watch consultancy business, selling real watches this time. I suppose I just didn’t want to end up like Nick, hopping from one hotel room to the next, skipping out on the bill at the end of the week. Anyway, he never really forgave me. Couldn’t understand why I wanted a regular life.’

‘I have to say, you don’t strike me as the regular-life kind of guy either,’ said Sophie, teasing gently.